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The government in which I believe is that which is based on mere moral sanction...the real law lives in the kindness of our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them.

Leo Tolstoy

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Leo Tolstoy
Age: 82 †
Born: 1828
Born: January 1
Died: 1910
Died: January 1
Diarist
Esperantist
Essayist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Playwright
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Writer
Tolstoi
Tolstoy
Lev Nikolaevich
graf Tolstoĭ
Lev Nikolayevich
Count Tolstoy
Count Lev Tolstoy
Leo
graf Tolstoy
Lev
Count Tolstoy
Lev
graf Tolsztoj
Лев Николаевич
c граф Толстой
Lew
graf Tolstoi
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Lev Tolstoy
Count Leo Tolstoy
Government
Mere
Real
Empty
Heart
Based
Sanction
Believe
Politics
Sanctions
Law
Fill
Moral
Reform
Lives
Kindness
Political
Hearts

More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

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This is where the strength of the physician lies, be he a quack, a homeopath or an allopath. He supplies the perennial demand for comfort, the craving for sympathy that every human sufferer feels.
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If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.
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Rest, nature, books, music...such is my idea of happiness.
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If I know the way home and am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way because I am staggering from side to side!
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Let us forgive each other - only then will we live in peace.
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No one is satisfied with his position, but every one is satisfied with his wit
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Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget.
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One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen.
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Yes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive, thought Ljewin, as he came away from the Schtscherbazkijs', and walked in the direction of his brother's lodgings. And I don't get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position.
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There is nothing more harmful to you than improving only your material, animal side of life. There is nothing more beneficial, both for you and for others, than activity directed to the improvement of your soul.
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Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox.
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Every time I tried to express my most heartfelt desires to be morally good I met with contempt and ridicule and as soon as I would give in to vile passions I was praised and encouraged. Ambition, love of power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, vengeance-all of it was highly esteemed.
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Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his tormenting tragedy is, and will be, the tragedy of the bedroom.
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It boils down to this: we should have done with humbug, and let war be war, and not a game ... If there were none of this magnanimity business in warfare, we should never go to war, except for something worth facing certain death for.
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Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
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I feel not only that I cannot disappear, as nothing disappears in the world, but that I will always be and have always been. I feel that, besides me, above me, spirits live, and that in this world there is truth.
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Error is the force that welds men together truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.
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He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered , with difficulty recognizing the beauty for which he picked and ruined it.
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A Gentleman is a man who will pay his gambling debts even when he knows he has been cheated.
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It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he may sense the new plans and aims revealed to him by reason, he continues to plod along in old paths until his life becomes frustrating and unbearable-he finally makes the change only when his usual life can no longer be tolerated.
Leo Tolstoy